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Random Reloading Thoughts

Most books on reloading
offer very good basic info on how to produce inexpensive and reliable reloads.
The stuff here was not explained to me when I started reloading and I only
found out about it from experience. Keep in mind that my reloading is mostly for
feeding HiPower and Service Match Rifles, although
this stuff would be applicable to almost any reloading situation.

The two views above are of my
reloading area. It's just big enough for me, and has no TV, radio, wife or
kids. I am to easily distracted and serious reloading requires a clear head and
no distractions.

You can see that there is a lot
of green (RCBS) and red (Hornady).
RCBS costs a little more, in some cases twice as much, but this stuff lasts a
lifetime, so that extra $100 figures out to less than $5 a year.

Although the hat in the bottom
center of the bottom picture is covering a Dillon reloader.

I am going to include links to
Midway for the items I am describing, I hope they work J .

Above is an RCBS collet bullet puller. This is sold without the collets; five
are shown above, one in the puller. The puller is installed in any standard
press, just the same as a die, with the appropriate collet is inside the
puller. A loaded round is placed in the shell holder, raised until the case
mouth touches the collet, the collet tightened by turning the handle at the
top, and the casing, minus the bullet, is lowered. This works much better and
much faster than the impact style puller, doesn't damage the bullet, and leaves
the powder inside the casing.

This is an RCBS bench primer. The best way to seat primers is with
this OR a hand primer. Priming with a reloading press doesn't give you a
"feel" for the way the primer is being seated and offers so much
leverage that it is easy to damage the primer. It should be noted that the Lee
hand primer requires special shell holders, while the RCBS hand primer uses the
same holder as a press. Also, I don't want to be tied to a single brand of
primer so I don't like the RCBS "ABS System"

This is the RCSB Competition die set. The resizing die is black, but other
than that is seems like a standard die. But the seating die is another matter!

The seating die is mounted in a
press, with either a standard shell holder, or in the case of shorter casings
an extended shell holder (comes with the die set), the casing is raised, and
the bullet is dropped into the "window" a la:

and the casing is raised until
the bullet is seated. The big, round knob at the top allows adjusting seating
depth in 0.001-inch increments without the need to loosen the die.

This is an electronic feeder and electronic scale. This one was sold by RCBS but I think
it is identical to a PACT product. Just enter the desired weight and push a
button, and it will dispense just the right amount and stop. I only use it for
IMR "stick" powder as the powder drop system works very well with
ball powder. See the Lee powder scoop in the lower right? Once I start the
feeder, I carefully dump some powder into the scale pan and then the feeder
just has to "top off" the load.

If you reload a LOT of
rounds, powder gets expensive! Bullets and primers seem to be a fixed, but
expensive, cost, but surplus powder can reduce the cost of reloads by about
half. I don't use "pull down" powder. Thatís the stuff recovered in
the de-mil process, required by our government, when purchasing surplus, loaded
ammo. I think it would make good blasting ammo though. I am talking about
surplus powder from US military stocks, commercial over-runs, and foreign
imports. This is sold on a bunch of levels, with Hogden
and Accurate at the top, with fancy packaging and re-loading info, down to the
people I buy from, in plain, not quite unmarked, containers. (Ever wonder why
Accurate numbers powder from 1000 to 5000? It's because they can buy 500,000 lbs of powder, assign a number, like say 2200, and when
that powder runs out, drop the number from their listing.) If your smart enough
to work up loads, you can use surplus powders. Two of the best sources I have
found are Pat McDonald and HiTech. (Allen is my brother.)